Gutter Magazine is the outstanding independent literary magazine from Freight Books, publishing fiction and poetry from writers born and living in Scotland. The work you’ll find here is in turns diverse, delicate and dangerous. Issue 14 will focus on poetry, and will be released in March, alongside a digital soundtrack. We have a sneak preview of two included poems, from renowned poet and musician, Aidan Moffat.

After the success of his first novel, the much-lauded A Book of Death & Fish, Ian Stephen returns to poetry and his passion for all things marine with a collection that evokes the dramatic waterscapes, rocky shores and wind-blasted textures of his native Hebrides.
‘Absorbing and riveting… dense, compelling and wildly idiosyncratic… splits the form open like a fresh catch, glistening and raw and singing with the sea’
– Kirsty Gunn, Guardian

Extract from Maritime
By Ian Stephen
Published by Saraband Books

At Plockton
In the ebb of pleasure here,
embedded in pebbles,

like the keel, settled for winter,
anchored by a welter
of orange lines.

Peter May is a novelist, originally from Glasgow but now living and working in France. He started out as a journalist, studying at the Edinburgh College of Commerce, and winning the Fraser Award aged just 21 for his writing. He was named Scotland’s You …

Luath Press takes its name from Robert Burns, whose little collie Luath (Gael., swift or nimble) tripped up Jean Armour at a wedding and gave him the chance to speak to the woman who was to be his wife and the abiding love of his life. Burns called one …